Kathleen Wallace slides into Noel Coward bons mots with a delicious subtlety that contrasts well with her nimbly gymnastic and diabolically satirical takeoff on Merce Cunningham-Martha Graham modernism when a dance record we expect to bruit the big band sounds of Bix Beiderbecke turns out to be a contemporary ballet score by Igor Stravinsky. 2,282 more words

There are few plays in the English language that are more deliciously witty and outrageously funny than Noel Coward’s “Private Lives.” It’s the 20th century British playwright at his very best as he imagined the most improbable of honeymoon disasters followed by what surely must be the quickest and widest pendulum swings between passionate love and intense hostility ever experienced by a divorced couple, at least on stage. 501 more words